


Australia Is No Better Than Here

by MontanaHarper



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Implied Relationships, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/MontanaHarper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, I’m real all right. And I’ve got a pretty good guess about what’s going on.” Young’s pinched expression is all too familiar. It’s the look that says something has gone disastrously wrong and he’s going to blame Nicholas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Australia Is No Better Than Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyrstzha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/gifts).



> This isn't exactly a fusion, but it owes a lot (including the title) to the 1969 movie _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. You shouldn't need to be familiar with the movie to understand the story, though.
> 
> I could not have done this without the help of [NightmareThrenody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightmareThrenody/pseuds/NightmareThrenody); he's not only the best offspring I could ask for, but he's the best at poking holes in my plots—and in this case, he also ensured everything made sense to someone who hadn't seen the movie. The title is a quote from the end of the movie.
> 
> Additional warnings in the end notes.

“Hit me,” the man to his left says, his voice low and steady, and Nicholas deftly slides the top card from the deck and flips it onto the table. _Duo pocula_. There’s barely a pause before the man says, “Again.” When the next card is _decem nummorum_ , the man swears softly under his breath and says, “Bust.”

“Did no one ever teach you not to hit on _septendecim_?” Nicholas asks mildly, gathering up the cards and his winnings. 

He shuffles the deck carefully, the rising tension in the still air buzzing along his skin like static electricity. The grate of wood on wood is jarring, too loud in the almost preternatural quiet of the saloon; in his peripheral vision Nicholas watches two of the three men whose money is now piled in front of him push their chairs back and walk away from the table with a studied nonchalance that’s more revealing than outright running would be.

Directly across from him, the remaining man presses his hands to the table and stands, slow and deliberate. Nicholas’s attention is caught by those hands, rough and weathered until they’re barely paler than the warm, honeyed oak beneath them. He knows even without seeing the palms that they bear calluses identical to his own — the sign of a professional gunman, an earthly stigmata revered and reviled in equal measure. 

The accusations of cheating are as unsurprising as they are unwarranted; Nicholas leans back in his chair and watches impassively as the man straightens up, hand hovering above the Colt at his hip. He has no doubts about his own ability to outdraw some no-name shooter who fancies himself a card shark.

Before he has a chance to prove his confidence justified, though, the saloon doors directly across from him swing open. He meets the eyes of the man who steps through, sees them widen the way he imagines his own are doing, and for a moment he’s faced with two conflicting urges: to greet the newcomer with a smile and to draw down on him. Then the man speaks (“Rush. I should’ve known I’d find you in the middle of this.”) and both urges fade as memories wash over him, leaving him with a vertiginous sort of double vision.

“Colonel Young,” Nicholas says, and the words taste strange on his tongue: right, and yet not quite right. There’s another name his mouth wants to shape, one equally right and yet not quite right, and he gives in to the urge. “Butch Cassidy.”

At this, the gambler with the itchy trigger finger freezes so completely that Nicholas isn’t even sure he’s still breathing, at least until he finally says, “So, that’d make you...?” He trails off, like he’s hoping if he doesn’t say it, it won’t be real.

“The Sundance Kid, apparently,” Nicholas confirms, and again it’s both right and not, true and false. “And for the record? I did not cheat.” The words resonate somewhere inside him, and he knows they’re unambiguously true of both the Kid and Dr. Nicholas Rush. He glances down at the cards he’s still unconsciously shuffling and realizes for the first time that they’re not normal playing cards; the numbers and letters are in Ancient, and the suits seem to owe more to Rider-Waite than to Bicycle. 

“Come on, Sundance.” It’s curt, Young’s tone laced with a familiar impatience. “Or do you need to be coaxed into leaving?”

Nicholas sweeps his winnings into his hat and drops the deck of cards in after. “Not at all.”

Things are starting to feel more solid, the unmoored sensation abating, so he’s already half expecting it when the gambler calls after him, “Hey, Kid? How good are you?”

“Trust me,” he tosses over his shoulder. “You don’t want to find out.” It’s a half-truth, because really it’s Nicholas who doesn’t want to find out.

*

“Before you start, Colonel, I’ve no better idea what’s going on than you do,” Nicholas says once they’re on their way out of town, riding side by side. The pace is slow and comfortable, their horses seemingly content to navigate the trail without guidance. When Young slants an unreadable look in his direction, he feels compelled to add, “In fact, I’m not convinced you’re any more real than the rest of this.” 

It’s not true. There’s a sharpness, a _clarity_ to Young that no one else seems to have, like the world is an overexposed photograph, blurry and washed out, and only Young is in focus. If there’s one thing Nicholas knows about whatever the hell he’s got himself stuck in, it’s that Young is in it with him.

“Oh, I’m real all right. And I’ve got a pretty good guess about what’s going on.” Young’s pinched expression is all too familiar. It’s the look that says something has gone disastrously wrong and he’s going to blame Nicholas.

Even though Nicholas knows no good can come of it, he can’t quite help himself; it’s become a knee-jerk reaction for him to return fire. “By all means,” he says, not bothering to curb the sarcasm, “dazzle me with your brilliance.”

The near silence stretches long enough for him to become painfully aware that he’s in the middle of nowhere with an armed man who left him for dead on an alien planet once already, and this time there isn’t anyone to question his disappearance. When Young finally does speak, though, what he says isn’t anything Nicholas would have predicted.

“What’s the last thing you remember, before all this?”

Nicholas has to stop and think about it, the memories insubstantial as fog slipping through his grasping fingers. “ _Destiny_. The stasis pods,” he says finally, the framework of an idea beginning to emerge. “I see where you’re going with this, but why _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_? What simulation can _Destiny_ possibly be running?”

Young shakes his head. “That I don’t know. I can tell you one thing, though: when I was casing the bank, I got a look at the safe as they were closing it for the night, and there wasn’t any money inside. It was filled with food and water.”

They ride in silence for a while, as Nicholas considers the implications. The sun is almost directly overhead and he closes his eyes, letting the heat soak deep into his bones and chase away the perpetual chill. Between the warmth and the almost hypnotic sway of the horse, he’s more relaxed than he’s been since they arrived on _Destiny_ , his breath coming slow and easy and his thoughts pacing themselves to match. It’s almost peaceful, and with the peace comes a degree of lucidity that he’s been missing amidst the life-or-death chaos, which sparks an idea.

“Perhaps,” he says thoughtfully, “the simulation is meant to be mental exercise, to help retain optimal brain function whilst we’re in stasis.”

There’s a long moment where Young doesn’t reply, and then he says, “That’s a worrying thought.”

“How so?” 

“Well, we’ve got million-year-old systems that we can barely trust to run life support, and I’m supposed to be happy that they’re in charge of calisthenics for my brain?” Young says. It’s exactly the sort of response Nicholas expects, and he’s oddly reassured by the familiar mistrust. 

“As far as we can tell, it’s perfectly safe. And anyway, I’m guessing as much as you are. For all we know, this could be the Ancients’ version of in-flight entertainment, Colonel.”

There’s a sudden snort of laughter from Young. “True. And it’s not like we’ve got any choice, is it?”

*

They arrive at the gang hideout before the sun has moved more than a few degrees in the sky. 

It’s been a while since Nicholas has watched the film he and Young seem to be re-enacting, but he remembers enough to know that Young is deviating from the script when — in the face of Harvey’s challenge to his leadership — he doesn’t balk at drawing his gun. And even if Nicholas didn’t remember, the fact that they’re suddenly on horseback again, riding along the trail to Hole-in-the-Wall, time seemingly rewound, is a good indication that something’s gone wrong.

“Damn,” Young says, rubbing at his unmarred chest.

Nicholas is aware that it’s not the most tactful question, but he can’t help asking, “You felt it, then?”

“Did I feel the bullet that killed me?” Young snaps. “Yes, I did, and it hurt like hell. Thank you for your concern, Rush.”

“Not to trivialize your pain, Colonel,” Nicholas says, only half meaning it, “but it’s actually a good thing you were shot. It’s provided us more data with which to determine the parameters of the simulation.” He begins ticking items off on his fingers: “First, as previously established in the saloon, we have some leeway in our words and actions. Second, there appears to be a limit of some sort on that freedom, though whether it’s a matter of degree or relates to specific actions is undetermined as yet. Third, we’re bound by certain constraints imposed by what we know of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...assuming, of course, that you’re at least a passable marksman in the real world.”

Young ignores the dig, and they’re silent the rest of the way, but the next iteration is both more successful and closer to Nicholas’s hazy memory of the film.

*

Nicholas finds robbing a train to be surprisingly fun.

He doesn’t share that thought with Colonel Young. Somehow, he doesn’t think it would go over well.

*

The lager Fanny serves is weak and watery, and Nicholas spends a moment wondering whether the simulation picked that expectation from his mind or Young’s before Young takes his first drink and grimaces and Nicholas decides it’s the former. On the street below, the marshal is trying unsuccessfully to raise a posse in the wake of the train robbery, his entreaties barely audible above the music spilling out the open French doors and onto the balcony where they’re sitting. It’s a war anthem — far too upbeat for the subject matter, in his opinion — but he doesn’t remember which war. Honestly, he doesn’t even remember what year it’s meant to be; his grasp of American history has always been a bit weak.

Young takes another drink, grimaces again, and sets the mug down on the table. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve got no intention of trying to enlist to fight the Spanish-American War,” he says, and it’s disconcertingly like he’s been reading Nicholas’s mind. “So there’s a test of one of your program parameters.”

They’re silent for a few minutes, snatches of conversation drifting up from the crowd in the street to compete with the enthusiastic singing coming from inside Fanny’s establishment. Fanny herself comes out to try to entice them inside, but Nicholas is in no mood for a party and Young seems equally reticent, and eventually she retreats.

“You ever consider joining the military? Becoming Captain Rush?” Young asks once she’s gone.

“Did you ever consider _not_ joining, Colonel?” Nicholas counters, which earns him a wry grin.

“My whole family’s military, at least three generations back.” Young idly rotates his mug on the table, one finger on the handle. “It was kind of a foregone conclusion from the time I was born.” Nicholas stifles the urge to ask if that bothers him; they’ve got some sort of strange cease-fire going at the moment, and he’s oddly reluctant to be the one to break it. In the end, Young saves him from the temptation by continuing, “Emily wanted me to retire, but I’m not sure I know how to be anything else.”

Nicholas nods, familiar with the feeling. “I always knew I wanted to go to university, even when I was just a lad. My father thought it was a waste, putting all that time and effort into my brains instead of brawn.”

Young holds up his mug, and says, “To disappointing the expectations of our loved ones.” 

It’s the most cynical thing Nicholas has ever heard from him; he raises his own mug and clinks it against Young’s.

When the saloon girl makes herself at home on Young’s lap, Nicholas decides that’s his cue. “I believe this is the part where I go in search of my lady love,” he says, standing and donning his hat. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Colonel.”

Young acknowledges him with a wave of his hand, which is more than Nicholas was expecting, considering.

*

This time when Nicholas gives the horse its head, it takes him to a clearing in the trees just beyond the outskirts of the town, where there’s a house and a barn and what looks to be a one-room school. He waits at the edge of the clearing, watches Etta cross from the school to the house, and lets out a relieved breath; he’d been half afraid that the Sundance Kid’s love interest would have Gloria’s face, or perhaps Mandy’s, but she’s just like everyone else in the simulation: nondescript, based on the vague memory of an actor.

He makes his way up the steps to the front door and knocks softly.

When she opens it, she says, “You could be a little more circumspect, you know,” but she’s smiling, and she tugs him inside by the front of his coat, the wooden screen door banging shut behind him.

*

Nicholas isn’t really surprised when Young tries to avoid the second train robbery entirely, but apparently that goes beyond the degree of freedom they’re allowed, and they end up repeating events half a dozen times in half a dozen ways before they manage to keep both the gang and the money intact. Young sends the former off with half of the latter before the posse arrives.

Neither of them have any illusions that they’ll be allowed to avoid being pursued.

When they first catch sight of the posse, they both swear — Young doing so under his breath, but Nicholas chooses “loudly and colorfully” instead. There are a dozen of the aliens who kidnapped him and Chloe, and they’re riding on miniature versions of the drones. It looks vaguely ridiculous, but he doesn’t feel like laughing, because the purpose of the simulation suddenly seems terrifyingly clear.

*

“So,” Young says, drawing the word out a little like he’s not sure he wants to say what comes afterward. “Do you think it means Eli’s calculations were wrong? We’re not going to make it, after all?”

It’s the night after their fourth day as fugitives, and they’re lying shoulder to shoulder under a wide, black sky that’s sprinkled with constellations Nicholas doesn’t recognize, their rough woolen blankets stacked together and shared in deference to the desert cold; with the posse tracking them, they can’t afford to light a fire for warmth, so they make do as best they can. It’s strangely intimate and — even more strangely — not as uncomfortable as Nicholas would’ve imagined, had the situation arisen before they went into stasis.

He settles for a partial truth. “I’m sure the calculations were right.” _And there’s not a lot we can do about unforeseen problems from in here._ He thinks that’s the end of the conversation, and he’s very nearly asleep when Young speaks again.

“I hate this.”

There are so many possible responses to that — so many ways in which Young could mean it, for that matter. Nicholas goes for flippant, because there’s safety in the familiar. “Being chased by alien terminators?” he says. “I can’t imagine why.”

Young elbows him in the ribs, but it’s perfunctory. “I hate being stuck in here with my people out there, in God knows what kind of danger.”

“You can’t save everyone, Colonel,” Nicholas says, and he means it to be comforting; it’s easier to forgive yourself when you accept that there are some things that are just beyond your control. He should’ve known Young wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment.

“I can damn well try.” Young’s voice isn’t any louder than before, but the anger and frustration bleeds through in his tone, and even if that weren’t obvious to Nicholas, the sudden tension in his body — muscles so taut they’re nearly vibrating against Nicholas everywhere they’re touching — would be. “I won’t give up on them!” 

Nicholas swallows down his frustration, doesn’t sigh. “I know,” he says softly. “I know.” It’s foolish, he thinks, to risk the many for the sake of the few, but it’s also what inspires the loyalty of Young’s people, of the whole expedition: the knowledge that Young considers each and every one of them vital and worth dying for. 

Even, apparently — and despite everything that’s gone before — Nicholas himself.

*

Nicholas looks down at where the rapids surge over and around the rocks below, water frothing white with the force of it. “Keep in mind that if I drown, we’ll likely have to start the chase all over again,” is all he says. 

Young grabs his hand just before they jump.

Neither of them drown, though Nicholas feels like he comes close a couple of times. 

Afterward, lying on the sandy bank — exhausted and soaked and with a rock poking him in the shoulder blade — all he can think is how much he hates that the simulation deprived him of a hard-earned skill, that it took away something he’d otherwise rely upon, and he suddenly has an insight into how Young must have felt in that first gun battle, when his military training abandoned him. 

His stomach chooses that moment to heave and he barely makes it onto his side before he’s vomiting up river water, his sinuses and throat burning.

“You okay?” Young asks, his hand touching down briefly on Nicholas’s shoulder.

An old-fashioned handkerchief appears in Nicholas’s peripheral vision; it’s damp from the river, but he takes it anyway, and wipes his mouth and nose. “Sorry,” he says, and, “Thank you.”

*

By unspoken agreement, they don’t invite Etta to come with them when they head to Bolivia to throw the posse off their trail.

She’s nice enough, considering she’s made of ones and zeroes and based entirely on hazy memories of a two-dimensional fictional character, but she’s not a real person. At best, she’s a prop to make them look less suspicious; at worst, she’s a distraction, and the last thing Nicholas needs right now is a distraction.

He doesn’t ask for Young’s reasons, and Young doesn’t volunteer them.

*

The further east the train travels, the more the muscles in Nicholas’s shoulders unknot. By the time they finally reach New York City — with no sign of their pursuers and no mention of Butch Cassidy’s Hole-in-the-Wall gang in the newspapers — he’s something approaching relaxed, so when it turns out the next steamer bound for South America doesn’t sail until the following evening, he asks the hotel clerk what the locals do for fun.

“Coney Island, Mister,” the guy says with a cheerful grin. “And be sure to go to Feltman’s for a hot sausage sandwich.”

Young takes surprisingly little convincing, and turns out to be a shark when it comes to the carnival games on the boardwalk. He wins half a dozen stuffed animals — the first of which he tries to present to Nicholas with a ridiculous parody of a courtly bow, laughing at the glare Nicholas shoots him in response. The rest are gifted to random children, all of whom, Young is quick to point out, are more appreciative than Nicholas.

They eat hotdogs from Feltman’s, and get deliciously rich clam chowder free with their bathing suit rentals from Tilyou’s Surf House. The Ferris wheel at Steeplechase Park isn’t quite the London Eye, but it provides a view Nicholas is never going to have the chance to see again: turn-of-the-century New York by twilight.

For a few hours he almost forgets that none of it is real.

*

Nicholas is occupied with packing up the last of their belongings at the hotel when Young goes to book passage on the steamer to South America, so he’s not expecting it when the steward guides them to two luxurious side-by-side cabins with a connecting door between them. They’re clearly what passes for first class in eighteen-ninety-whenever: spacious and decorated with lustrous dark wood and plush velvet, more like suites than cabins as far as Nicholas is concerned.

Once the steward is gone, Nicholas rounds on Young. “It’s a bit extravagant, don’t you think?”

Young just shrugs and says, “It’s only money, Rush. We have more than enough, and it’s not like there’s going to be much to spend it on in Bolivia.” 

Young has a point, but it still rubs Nicholas the wrong way; he grew up poor, one of seven children in a working-class home, and despite the fact that he’s rejected almost every aspect of his upbringing, there’s still some part of him that’s appalled by profligacy, appalled by _waste_. 

He looks up to see Young still watching him, expression unreadable, and Nicholas realizes how ridiculous he’s being, working himself into a temper over Young spending imaginary money on imaginary luxuries. He shakes his head and lets out a huff of laughter. “You’re right,” he says. “Ignore me.”

“Strangely, that’s not as easy as it sounds,” Young says, but he’s smiling, so Nicholas lets it go.

*

“I’ve been thinking,” Nicholas says as they haul their baggage off the train and onto the dilapidated platform at Santa Ines, Bolivia. Between the eight days on the steamer and the two traveling inland by rail from the port at Antofagasta, Chile, he’s had plenty of time to think. “If this is a simulation of our current real-world situation, the best way to find out if it’s going to work is to follow the real-world plan — lie low and wait for things to blow over — rather than follow the plot of the film and continue our crime spree on yet another continent.”

He’s marshaled his arguments, expecting Young to disagree with him on principle if nothing else, but all Young says is, “Okay, sure.”

*

“You ever heard the story of the scorpion and the frog?” Everett asks one afternoon in what Nicholas is pretty sure is August, though he might have lost track of time a bit in the five (or possibly six?) months they’ve been here.

It’s siesta time. They’re sitting in rickety wooden chairs on their covered front porch, feet kicked up on the railing, and Nicholas can’t believe he ever enjoyed the heat, not back in Wyoming and certainly not here; days like today, he finds himself longing for a good, cold Glaswegian winter. At the moment, he’s got his shirt off — propriety be damned — and he’s just hoping a breeze will pick up before he melts.

“The scorpion and the frog?” he echoes Everett. It’s possible his brain has already melted.

Everett picks up his glass of _limonada_ and takes a slow sip. “There’s this scorpion, and he wants to get across a river, but he can’t swim,” he says. “He asks to ride across on a frog’s back, and the frog refuses at first, afraid the scorpion will sting him. Eventually, the scorpion convinces him, after pointing out that it wouldn’t be in his best interests to sting the frog, because they’d both die. They start across and when they get about halfway, the scorpion stings the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog asks the scorpion why. The scorpion replies, ‘It’s in my nature.’”

Nicholas thinks about it for a minute. There was a time when he would’ve assumed the parable was a barb aimed at him, but now he considers and dismisses the idea. “I’ll take Obscure Allegory for $500, Alex,” he says, catching Everett mid-sip and getting a spit-take for his trouble. After a moment, he adds, “Sorry,” and tosses his discarded shirt to Everett, to mop up with.

“My point, Nick,” Everett says, carefully emphasizing each word, “is that Butch and Sundance failed because they couldn’t overcome their nature, couldn’t stop being bandits, even though they knew it would be what brought them down.”

Nicholas fights down a smile. “So you’re saying I was right, then? I just want to be clear, so I know if it’s time to start marketing ice skates to the devil.”

His slightly sticky shirt hits him square in the face, and he loses the battle and laughs aloud.

*

Nicholas falls asleep in Santa Ines, in a lumpy bed he built with his own two hands, lulled by Everett’s soft snores coming from off to his right. He wakes up on board _Destiny_ , in a stasis pod he repaired with his own two hands, and the quiet sound to his right isn’t a snore, it’s the hum of another pod cycling off, its door gliding silently upward.

All around him, pods are opening, the inhabitants waking from their three-year nap. He sees a flash of red out of the corner of his eye, and turns to find Eli beaming at him in a way that makes his chest ache. He doesn’t know what to do with the feeling, so he catches Eli in a hug, eliciting a surprised noise, and says, “I knew you could do it, Math Boy.” 

Another hand claps Eli on the back, brushing against Nicholas’s, and Everett says, “Good work, Eli.” 

Nicholas lets Eli go, only to be unexpectedly pulled into another hug. “You, too, Sundance,” Everett says, his breath warm against Nicholas’s neck and his hands clenching the back of Nicholas’s shirt. “You’re going to make a killing with those ice skates.”

Eli looks at them both like they’re crazy, and Nicholas can’t help but laugh. 

-=end=-

**Author's Note:**

> I've used rough and dirty Latin to imply spoken Ancient, since canon tells us the two are related. You can hover your mouse over any of the instances to get a translation.
> 
> Additional content notes:  
> \- mention of a temporary, off-screen death of a major character that occurs in a virtual environment  
> \- implied sexual liaison between a human whose mind is inhabiting said environment and the simulacrum of a woman based entirely on a fictional character (which might trip dubcon triggers, depending on how you view artificial intelligences)  
> \- brief and non-graphic vomiting


End file.
